


cum in ecclesia loqueris

by sturmundwank



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Ineffectual Bystander Intervention, London, Pre-Relationship, Wizarding Wars (Harry Potter)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-18 23:47:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29498316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sturmundwank/pseuds/sturmundwank
Summary: Three years after the Battle of Hogwarts, during one of her trips to the public garden where she works on defeating Lord Voldemort, Hermione has a conversation with a Death Eater.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 7
Kudos: 29





	cum in ecclesia loqueris

**Author's Note:**

> This fic really is just one very long conversation. Sorry, team.
> 
> Also, I have to warn you for a brief hypothetical reference to something that could be read as either non-con or torture.

Hermione paused at the junction of Peter’s Hill and Queen Victoria St and looked up, turning her face to the light breeze. The dome of St Paul’s Cathedral towered over the cramped urban horizon, so big and so close she wanted to reach out and touch it. She allowed herself a moment to admire the way the last rays of sunlight glanced off the long curve of the roof before she made to turn onto Queen Victoria. Just as she was turning away, however, her eyes caught on a figure standing on the other side of the crossing. She dimly registered dark clothes that weren’t wizarding robes but weren’t quite Muggle either, and eyes that were already looking straight at her.

It was Draco Malfoy.

Hermione turned on her heel and started running.

Getting to Cleary Garden was out of the question now. She had no idea if she had been followed or if running into Malfoy was some twisted coincidence, but she couldn’t risk leading him there. She had to go back in the direction she had come from.

She could either draw him into a side street and fight or try to lose him in the crowd, she reasoned as her white trainers flashed against the pavement. She knew it in her bones that she could take on Draco Malfoy alone, but if there were more Death Eaters in the area, starting a magical confrontation would be a terrible idea.

The Millennium Bridge would be packed at sunset, she thought.

If she could make it that far, if she could just put some distance between her and Malfoy in the crowd, she would crouch down for a moment, pretend to tie her shoes and glamour herself. She would have to do it very quickly, after transfiguring her distinctive lilac puffer first.

It was a reckless plan, but she could make it work. It wasn’t like she had much of a choice.

She squashed the thought that Harry’s Invisibility Cloak would have been a better solution with practised ruthlessness.

She threw a frantic look over her shoulder when she neared CLS. She could see Malfoy’s shiny head bobbing in the middle distance. He had crossed Queen Victoria St—at least the signal light hadn’t been green when they saw each other, she thought, for once thankful for rush-hour congestions—and was now running after her.

She had to slow down as the crowd thickened. She was dodging and weaving between couples, groups of students and families now, while Malfoy was no doubt gaining ground on her. She didn’t want to look back again to check.

She was so close, though. She saw a group of elderly white tourists coming off the bridge just ahead of her. If she could sneak around them and use their mass to hide from Malfoy while she—

‘Granger,’ she heard right behind her.

 _No, no, no, NO_. She kept moving forward.

‘Granger!’ Someone grabbed her left arm.

She turned around with a snarl and hit the person behind her without bothering to check if it was Malfoy. Of course it was Malfoy.

The angle was bad and she hadn’t taken aim, so she barely got his face. He yelped when her nails scratched his cheekbone.

‘You bloody nutter!’ he exclaimed and tried to grab her other arm too. Hermione pulled on his hands with all the strength she could muster and stepped on his foot. She thought their scuffle must look a little comical to onlookers.

‘All right there?’ someone asked in an uncertain tone of voice, and Hermione and Malfoy both stilled and turned in the direction of the sound. An anxious older man was coming off the bridge abutment a few metres away from them. Malfoy dropped her arms.

Hermione said the first thing she could think of.

‘Thank you, sir, I’m just talking to my ex. He ran into me—he’s leaving now. Could I walk with you to the nearest bus stop?’

‘Ah, of cours—’ the man began to reply, but Malfoy spat, ‘You fucking wish, Granger,’ and then, ‘She’s lying. She stole from me, I’d never _touch_ —I want my things back.’

As the man looked back and forth between them, Hermione’s brain caught up with her mouth. Malfoy’s familiar childishness had eased her earlier panic a little, but she had to remember this wasn’t Hogwarts and he was not a schoolboy any more. She was trying to put a clueless Muggle between her and a Death Eater. Who knew what Malfoy was prepared to do if this man took her side? She didn’t even want to think about why he was walking around Muggle London with his wand openly holstered on his hip.

Hermione suddenly felt scared for this stranger who was peering at them uncertainly, and ashamed of herself for putting him at risk.

‘You know what, I should probably just talk to him,’ she said, taking her eyes off Malfoy’s furious expression to flash the man a smile. ‘Clear up our misunderstanding. Thank you, but I’ll walk to the stop on my own later.’

‘Ah, all right, miss, I’ll just—if you’re sure. Goodbye then.’ He threw her one last look over his shoulder and she nodded with false conviction.

Hermione and Malfoy stared each other down as the man melted back into the flow of pedestrian traffic. She slowly reached inside her puffer, where she kept her wand, and Malfoy’s hand crept closer to the wand holster peeking out between the folds of his open overcoat.

‘I would think very carefully if I were you,’ Malfoy said without looking away from her eyes, ‘unless you want your precious Muggles to see their first and last magical duel.’

Her fingers curled around her wand and she felt her magic come alive under her skin.

‘And what are my alternatives?’ she asked.

‘Not skipping around central London without a single glamour on you, for one,’ Malfoy shot back. ‘The Dark Lord wants you dead, Granger, not sure if you’re aware—and here I find you gaping at the sights like a pupil on a school trip.’

‘I didn’t know you cared, Malfoy.’

‘Just don’t want to be the one to bring you in, is all,’ he said. ‘I might be expected to put on a performance I’m not particularly keen on.’

It took her a few seconds to understand what he was implying. She tightened her grip on her wand.

‘Charming,’ she managed to say when she found her voice. ‘And how many _performances_ have you put on for your master so far?’

‘None,’ replied Malfoy. ‘That’s not what the Dark Lord needs me for.’ He seemed weirdly stung by her question considering that he had introduced the subject. ‘I’m just saying, Granger. I don’t think you should be walking around with that beastly hair and your head in the clouds any more, even if it’s just Muggle London. Make a bloody effort.’

‘Thank you for the constructive criticism, Malfoy, but what is this?’ Hermione demanded. ‘Are you here to—kidnap me or to nag me?’

For a moment, he just looked at her, seemingly as thrown by their encounter as she felt. And then:

‘Tell me something. Is Potter alive?’

She gaped at him. The hand wrapped around her wand went slack.

‘Do you know what happened to him?’ Malfoy clarified. ‘After the Battle of Hogwarts?’

‘What are you talking about?’ she croaked out. ‘Everyone saw Harry—your mother saw it happen that day. What are you playing at?’

It was his turn to stare.

‘Are you telling me,’ he said slowly, ‘that Potter is really just _dead_? The great saviour of wizarding Britain just—what, he skived off halfway through the job?’ There was a slight note of hysteria in his voice now. ‘You really haven’t heard from him at all?’

Hermione had no idea what was happening. _Obviously_ she had thought that Harry wasn’t dead. In the months after the Battle of Hogwarts, after his body disappeared, she thought that whoever had taken it away must have done so for a reason. The alternative had been unthinkable, at least at first.

But now, almost three years after she had last seen his body laid out on the ground, she understood that Harry would have already come back if he was going to come back at all. That unlike the rest of them, he had never intended to survive.

‘I saw Harry’s body with my own eyes, Malfoy. You serve the man who killed him. Why don’t you ask him for the details if you have any doubts?’

Malfoy narrowed his eyes.

‘I’m not a lunatic, Granger, but nice try. If the Dark Lord thought for one second I had reason to suspect Potter was still alive and didn’t tell him, he would make me and my parents wish we were dead.’

‘You… have reason to suspect Harry is still alive,’ Hermione parroted blankly, trying to wrap her mind around what she was hearing. ‘You have for a while. What do you mean?’

He looked off to the side stubbornly.

 _‘Malfoy,_ ’ she insisted when the silence stretched. Her own tone baffled her. She had no idea why she was treating him like an antagonistic classmate instead of a serious magical threat. Then again, she had no idea why he was telling her these things either.

‘If you tell anyone about this, I’ll kill you,’ Malfoy said at last. ‘I swear I will.’

‘Tell anyone what?’

‘Someone saw it. Someone saw Potter breathe.’

‘ _What_?’

‘For Merlin’s sake, don’t screech.’ He looked around quickly, but the sea of Muggle pedestrians parting around their tête-à-tête paid them no mind. In a distant corner of her mind, Hermione noticed it was getting dark. ‘You can’t tell anyone about this. I don’t care if you’re in contact with your little Gryffindor club or what. You swear to me right now that you won’t tell anyone or I’ll Obliviate you on the spot.’

‘I swear it,’ she rushed out. ‘I’ll take a magical oath, whatever you want. You have my word.’ She would do it too. It wasn’t like she had much contact with her Gryffindor club any more.

Merlin, if this was _true_. She couldn’t think about the implications right now, but what if it was true? Her head was spinning a little. She couldn’t even name the feelings stirring in her.

‘That’s all I know,’ Malfoy said. ‘I overheard someone say they thought Potter was still breathing before his body disappeared. I thought. I thought if it was a trick, or—if there was any chance.’ He swallowed. ‘But evidently not.’

Hermione forced herself to resurface from her racing thoughts and look at Malfoy. She thought she knew who had admitted Harry might have been breathing when he was supposed to be dead and why Malfoy hadn’t told the Dark Lord about it, but she wasn’t going to ask for confirmation. If her guess was correct, it was a secret he had a right to keep.

She had a different question anyway.

‘Malfoy, do you _want_ Harry to be alive?’

He blinked at her, caught out.

‘Am I pining for Scarface like a randy schoolgirl, you mean? Not a chance.’

‘That’s not what I asked. I only meant that it sounded—’

‘I don’t,’ Malfoy cut her off. ‘I don’t care what happened to him. Just. I heard something strange, so I wanted to know.’

His closed-off expression belied the dragon dung he was peddling. It was obvious he was fighting down disappointment.

‘Well, I want Harry to be alive,’ she volunteered. Malfoy snorted derisively. ‘I haven’t seen him since the Battle of Hogwarts, but if your mo—if someone saw him breathe, then I want to believe he survived the Killing Curse somehow. So thank you for telling me.’

‘I didn’t bring you a bloody present, Granger; it was just a question. Think what you will.’

‘Have it your way, then,’ she allowed. She gave him a long look. ‘So now that I’ve satisfied your curiosity, what next?’

‘Well,’ he said. He looked a little lost.

She was about to do something reckless, she knew. This was Draco Malfoy, opportunistic coward, part-time ferret and perennial disappointment. Draco Malfoy, Death Eater. She _knew_ she would be wrong to trust him, and yet.

He was going to let her go. They both knew it now. And she was so _tired_ of not trusting anyone, of living in terrible places and going days without a real conversation, of being afraid and alone all the time. She just wanted it to end.

And Harry might be alive.

She took a deep breath.

‘What are you going to do if I tell you Harry left us a way to defeat You-Know-Who?’

Malfoy licked his lips.

‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear you,’ he said nervously.

‘I haven’t given up on it. I’m still trying,’ she went on, thinking about the bag buried under the Japanese peonies in Cleary Garden.

‘For fuck’s sake, _don’t tell me that_!’

‘A secret for a secret, Malfoy,’ she said. She could tell she had him now.

‘Well, I don’t want it! Do you think that just because I told you—that because of what I told you, I’m on your side now? You’re out of your mind.’

‘I think you’re going to let me go,’ she said calmly. ‘And if you were going to tell You-Know-Who what I just told you, you would have been happy to hear it. I think you’re afraid because this is a secret you know you’ll keep.’

‘Ten points to Gryffindor,’ he hissed at her, momentarily sounding so much like Snape she wanted to laugh, ‘for forcing me to hide one more thing that could get me killed during my monthly mind rape sessions with the Dark Lord. Bloody well done, Granger, thank you so much.’

‘Oh.’ Voldemort was a Legilimens, she suddenly remembered. ‘Oh. I hadn’t thought of that.’ Her stomach dropped at the realisation she had just put Malfoy in more danger. ‘Gosh, Malfoy, that’s not what I wanted to do at all. I’m very sorry.’

Her excuse felt too pathetic under the circumstances to warrant a reply, and he didn’t give her one. She stared down at the tips of his boots, stewing in self-recrimination.

‘Should I Obliviate you?’ she offered when she could no longer stand the awkward silence. ‘I could make you forget that you saw me today.’

‘There’s no need.’

‘Really, I’m quite handy with memory charms. No headaches at all.’

‘It’s _fine_ ,’ Malfoy ground out. ‘I’m an Occlumens. I know how to handle it. I can resist an _Oblivio_ too, for your information.’

‘Ah.’ That was good. Snape's doing, most likely. ‘That’s very impressive,’ she said politely.

Incredibly, her stilted compliment seemed to lift some of the tension between them. Malfoy raised a hand to dust off the rich black fabric of his coat and met her eyes again.

Suddenly, an idea struck Hermione.

‘You know, that huge building behind you,’ she gestured and waited for Malfoy to dart a quick look over his shoulder, ‘is St Paul’s Cathedral. Inside, right under the dome, there’s a place called the Whispering Gallery. Muggles don’t know this, they think it’s all a quirk of physics, but it actually has its own magic. Wizards don’t know either because they never go to Muggle churches.’

‘Granger, are you having an episode? What are you saying?’

She continued as if he hadn’t spoken.

‘If you start under one of the statues and walk all the way around the gallery three times in a clockwise direction, and then you whisper something to that statue, it will remember it.’

Malfoy had ceased his protestations and was now looking at her carefully, with no trace of emotion on his face. It was an expression he’d picked up after Hogwarts, she thought, because she didn’t remember seeing it in school.

‘And if you walk around the gallery three times in a _counter_ -clockwise direction, the statue will whisper your words back to you. Do you understand?’

Malfoy held her gaze and nodded slowly.

‘How long do they remember what they hear?’

‘I don’t know. Years, I think. The summer before fourth year, I heard something from when Margaret Thatcher was still Muggle Prime Minister. And they can memorise entire speeches. But they’ll only repeat the last thing they were told, that’s the trick. So…’

She crossed her arms and bit her lip in concentration, trying to remember the different statues in the gallery.

‘If you… if you ever want out, completely out, or you _really_ need help with keeping your secrets, or you know something you think I should know, whisper it to the statue of Jerome,’ she decided finally. ‘And If I ever leave you a message, it will be under the statue of John Chrysostom.’ She spelled out C-H-R-Y-S-O-S-T-O-M for Malfoy’s benefit.

He looked like he was committing her instructions to memory. After a few seconds, his face clouded over.

‘I can’t be in Muggle London very often,’ he said. ‘Maybe once or twice a month.’

‘That’s fine,’ Hermione said, ‘but I’ll probably check more often than that in case you leave me something urgent.’ She was in Cleary Garden several times a week anyway. And now that she knew Harry might still be alive—but she wasn’t going to think about that yet. ‘Just don’t… Well, to be frank, I can’t believe I’m trusting you, Malfoy, but here we are. These last years have been hard for me, and I don’t know how long I can keep up like this, on my own. Without anyone or anything to hold on to. But you just gave me something! So please don’t—’ Embarrassingly, her voice cracked, but she swallowed and pushed the last thing she needed to say past the lump in her throat. ‘Don’t sell me out.’

Malfoy was giving her that careful look again, the one she hadn’t seen before. After a while, he looked away and spoke.

‘I don’t know how long I can keep this up either, Granger. My life has not exactly been a bed of roses recently.’

 _No, I don’t imagine it has_ , she thought while she studied the tired lines of his face. He looked a lot like he had in sixth year, she realised now.

‘So maybe it’s good to know there’s someone out there who’s still… who thinks this is a nightmare and wants to wake up. Not a lot of sane people in my immediate circle, you might be shocked to hear.’ He turned back to meet her eyes. ‘I don’t _want_ to sell you out, all right?’

She thought about it. It wasn’t what she had hoped for, but the fact she had anything at all to hope for was already a minor miracle worthy of celebration.

‘All right.’

Her response didn’t seem to satisfy him.

‘You’ve been missing for so long no one would think to ask me about you, or to get suspicious,’ Malfoy went on. ‘They’ve all gone...’ He waved a scornful hand. ‘They’re complacent now, in a way. Unless you show up in front of them they’re not going to think about you—or me for that matter. That’s among the few perks of my situation.’

‘That’s good to hear,’ she said, and couldn’t help adding, ‘but you shouldn’t get complacent either, if you’re going to keep this a secret.’

Some distant cousin of the classic Malfoy sneer appeared on his face.

‘Keeping secrets successfully is how I’ve made it this far, Granger. And _I_ at least have not had to eat out of bins yet.’ His eyes swept down to her bony knees, which were beginning to redden in the chilly air coming from the river.

She suppressed the urge to smooth down the school uniform skirt she had bought from Oxfam and pointedly returned his once-over. Whatever delicacies the Malfoy Manor house-elves were serving, he didn’t seem to be eating much better than her.

‘Well, then,’ Malfoy said when it was clear she wasn’t going to take the bait. ‘If you’re not going to Obliviate me against my will, you should go hail your primitive bus now. You never saw me here, I never saw you. I’ll talk to the statue you told me about if I can. If it’s safe. That’s all I can give you.’

‘All right,’ she said again. ‘I appreciate it.’

‘Circe’s tits, Granger, that’s _all I can give you_. If I can pass on some information here and there without making it obvious, I may try, but I’m absolutely not going to do anything that could get me killed.’

‘Malfoy.’ She almost smiled. _You know you’re doing something that could get you killed right now_. _That’s why you’re being like this_. ‘I don’t want you to die, especially not for helping me. Thank you, and do be careful. So will I. Now, as you said, I have a bus to catch.’

Something in her expression must have finally pacified him because he gave her a final nod and turned away from her. She left him there, at the foot of the bridge, and started walking back in the direction they had come from.

When she crossed Castle Baynard St, she turned around. Malfoy must have left because she couldn’t see him anywhere, but sometime during their long conversation, the lights on the Millennium Bridge had come on.

It was a beautiful night.

**Author's Note:**

> Some random things:
> 
> Yes, Harry is alive. He's been sleeping in the care of the centaurs in the Forbidden Forest since the Battle of Hogwarts, though, which means he's been talking to Dumbledore's spirit for almost three years by the time Hermione and Draco meet. I'm sure even Draco would admit Harry has had it worse than him if he knew. But at least Harry will come out of the experience with vastly improved magical knowledge!
> 
> Ron is also alive! No members of the Golden Trio were endangered in the making of this fic.
> 
> Voldemort has created a couple of new horcruxes since the Battle of Hogwarts, which Hermione and Draco will learn about and try to find before Harry wakes up and rejoins the war effort.
> 
> The Millennium Bridge was actually destroyed in the _Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince_ film, but I follow the books, according to which it was the the fictional Brockdale Bridge that went down.
> 
> The fic title means 'when you speak in church' in Latin and is taken wildly out of context from one of Jerome's letters.
> 
> 'CLS' refers to the City of London School.
> 
> Finally, yes, OF COURSE Hermione and Draco will get married in St Paul's Cathedral in the end.


End file.
